The servant at the entrance barely glanced at Viktor's invitation. Just nodded, waved him forward with the same bored efficiency he showed every guest.
Viktor stepped through the doors.
The world exploded.
Sound hit him first—a wall of noise so loud it felt physical. A hundred conversations layered over each other, voices rising and falling in waves. Laughter, sharp and grating. Glass clinking in rapid percussion. A string quartet playing somewhere, the notes climbing higher and faster. All of it bouncing off marble floors and high ceilings until it became a roar that pressed against his skull.
Then sight. Color everywhere—violent and dizzying. Silk gowns in gold and crimson and purple so deep it looked black. Jewels catching lamplight and throwing it back in sharp flashes that made his eyes hurt. Servants in black and silver weaving through the crowd with trays held high. Bodies everywhere, moving and shifting like water, filling every available space.
And smell. It hit him last but hardest—thick and cloying, coating his throat. Heavy perfume layered with wine and rich food. Roasted meat. Butter. Something floral and sickly sweet. It made his stomach turn.
Viktor froze just inside the entrance, his back pressed against the wall.
This wasn't like the palace. The palace was quiet corridors and careful words, cold stone and measured footsteps. This was chaos. Messy and loud and wrong.
He was ten years old in a crowd of giants.
Nearby, a man's voice boomed over the noise: "—told the magistrate he could shove his tariff proposal where the sun doesn't—" Laughter erupted around him.
A woman's voice, closer: "Did you see what she's wearing? Silk from last season. How embarrassing."
Viktor's hand found the locket beneath his tunic. Squeezed. The cold metal centered him just enough to move.
Find the sculpture. That's all he had to do.
He tried to slip along the wall, staying small, invisible. The ballroom was massive—marble floors stretching endlessly, crystal chandeliers dripping light, tall windows showing the dark garden beyond. Somewhere in here, Charles had said. The main hall. This had to be it.
Viktor edged forward, keeping to the edges where the crowd thinned slightly.
"—absolutely shocked when the vote—"
"—three thousand gold, can you imagine—"
"—heard his mistress is—"
The voices crashed over him in fragments, none of them complete, all of them too loud.
A large man stumbled backward directly into his path.
The impact sent Viktor reeling sideways. His shoulder hit something hard—a servant carrying a tray of wine glasses. The tray tipped. Crystal shattered against marble, the sound cutting through the noise like breaking ice.
Wine spread across white stone in a dark pool.
"Watch yourself, boy!" The drunk noble didn't even look back, just waved a dismissive hand and disappeared into the crowd.
The servant glared down at Viktor, his face tight with fury. "Stay out of the way."
Heat flooded Viktor's face. People were staring. A circle of space had opened around the shattered glass, and he stood at the center of it—visible, exposed, exactly what he wasn't supposed to be.
A woman whispered to her companion: "Whose child is that?"
"No idea. Looks lost."
Viktor ducked his head and pushed deeper into the crowd, his heart hammering. The map Charles had shown him was flat lines on paper. This was three-dimensional chaos—rooms connecting to rooms, hallways branching off, bodies blocking every sight line.
He was lost.
Viktor took a turn down what he thought might lead to another viewing hall. The crowd thinned. The music dimmed slightly.
He found himself in a narrow corridor lined with doors. Servants hurried past carrying trays and folded linens. Voices echoed from somewhere ahead—kitchen sounds, orders being shouted.
This wasn't right. This wasn't—
"You there!"
A woman appeared in front of him. Middle-aged, iron-grey hair pulled back tight, wearing a head servant's uniform. Her eyes were sharp as knives.
"Children aren't allowed back here, boy! What do you think you're doing?" She grabbed his shoulder and physically turned him around, marching him back toward the noise. "Guest halls are that way. Go find your parents."
Viktor's face burned. His throat felt tight. He stumbled back into the ballroom, back into the wall of sound and light and crushing bodies.
He was failing. Couldn't even find the right room. Couldn't do anything right.
"Oh, you poor dear, are you lost?"
A woman leaned down, her smile wide and kind in a way that felt performative. Forty, maybe older, dripping in emeralds that caught the light. Her perfume was so strong it made his eyes water—roses and something chemical underneath.
"Where is your mother?" Her voice was sweet but loud, like she was talking to something small and stupid.
Viktor's mouth went dry. He couldn't say his mother's name. Couldn't say he was alone. His mind went blank.
"I... I'm looking for the... sculpture." His voice came out as a squeak.
The woman laughed—high and shrill, the sound stabbing into his ears. "Oh, the ice sculpture! Aren't we all! So dramatic, the Duke." She patted his head like he was a pet. Her rings were cold against his scalp. "He's not unveiling it for another hour, dear. Now, run along and find your parents before you get underfoot."
An hour.
The word dropped through him like a stone into deep water.
An hour. His entire plan—get in, find the sculpture, destroy it, get out—shattered. His target wasn't even here yet.
He was trapped.
Time crawled.
Viktor found a corner near the windows where the crowd thinned just enough to breathe. He pressed his back against the wall and tried to think. Tried to plan.
But the noise wouldn't stop. It built and built, pressing against the inside of his skull until he couldn't hear his own thoughts.
"—scandal with the treasury—"
"—wine is barely acceptable—"
"—her second husband, can you believe—"
The conversations meant nothing. Just noise. Just chaos.
Minutes felt like hours. Viktor watched the crowd, counting heartbeats, trying to track time. The musicians finished one piece and started another. Servants circulated with fresh trays. People laughed and drank and talked and none of them saw him standing there shaking in his corner.
His chest felt tight. The air was thick and warm, too full of perfume and wine and bodies. He couldn't get enough of it into his lungs.
Father's voice echoed in his head: Don't fail me. Don't be weak.
Leopold's voice: You'll fail. You always fail.
Orell's abacus: Click. Click. Click. Liability.
His mother, that last conversation: His praise is a cage.
Too many voices. Too loud. The walls pressed closer. The ceiling pushed down. The crowd crushed in from all sides.
He was suffocating.
He needed out. Now.
A side door—plain, small, half-hidden by a velvet curtain. Viktor shoved off the wall and squeezed through the crowd. Not polite anymore. Not trying to be invisible. Just moving, pushing, needing air and quiet and space.
He grabbed the handle and yanked the door open.
Cold night air hit his face like salvation.
Viktor stumbled onto a dark side lawn and slammed the door shut behind him. The party noise muffled immediately, reduced to a distant murmur through stone walls.
He bent over, hands on his knees, gasping. The spring air was cool and clean. No perfume. No wine. No pressing bodies. Just silence and darkness and the smell of grass.
His legs shook. His hands shook. Everything shook.
He'd failed. He was awful at this. He wasn't a spy or an asset or anything useful. He was just a scared kid who couldn't even walk through a party without falling apart.
Father would know. Would see. Would finally understand that Viktor was exactly what everyone thought—weak, useless, the phantom.
A drumroll shattered the quiet.
Viktor's head snapped up. The sound came from around the corner of the building—ceremonial drums, rhythmic and purposeful.
Then voices. Many voices. Excited. Loud.
He scrambled forward on unsteady legs and peered around the corner.
The main garden spread before him, lit by lanterns hanging from spring-blooming trees. A crowd of guests stood in a semicircle, all facing center. At the focal point, Duke Farrow stood beaming, his arms spread wide in theatrical presentation.
"My honored guests!" His voice carried across the lawn. "Behold!"
Two servants gripped the corners of a massive tarp and pulled.
The sculpture emerged.
It was huge—easily twice Viktor's height, maybe more. A chimera carved entirely from ice: lion's body with muscles perfectly defined, serpent's tail coiled beneath, eagle's wings spread wide, dragon's head rearing back with mouth open in a silent roar. Every scale, every feather, every detail was flawless. The ice caught lamplight and moonlight both, glowing from within like it held its own light source.
Beautiful. Terrible. Impossible.
The crowd gasped and applauded.
Viktor's chest tightened. It was really beautiful. The kind of beautiful that made you stop and stare. And he was supposed to destroy it.
For a heartbeat—just one—he hesitated.
Four servants began rolling it forward on a wheeled platform, slow and careful, guiding it toward the ballroom's garden entrance thirty feet away. They moved with precision, treating the sculpture like it might shatter if they breathed wrong.
Viktor's breath came quick and shallow. His hands still shook, but differently now. Not pure fear anymore. Something sharper. Focus.
The sculpture was here. His target was here.
Nearly two hours had passed since the woman said "an hour." He'd lost all sense of time in that suffocating ballroom.
But none of that mattered now.
The mission was back on.
He could do this. He had to do this.
He didn't have a choice.